“They never returned to their homeland and they never told us they were unhappy with their decision to come to this country.”

Recently, my father told me something he remembered. I don’t recall how it came up, maybe I asked my father to tell me his earliest childhood memory of Nana and O’Pa. He said he remembered my grandfather saying “I’m not staying here.” These being recollections, my father wasn’t specific about which word O’Pa might have emphasized. Did he mean “I’m not staying HERE,” meaning Lisbon Falls, Maine? Or did he mean “I’m not STAYING here,” meaning the United States?

That must have been kind of scary for my father; he would have just been a little boy. It was the Depression, after all. Fear leaves scars.

Then he said that soon after that, O’Pa bought the land we call The Farm and he never talked about leaving “here” again.